Chapter 16
SEAMUS
When the doorbell rang on Saturday night, I knew it wasn’t her.
Though I’d completely forgotten until only a couple of hours ago, tonight was poker night, and this month, it was my turn to host.
Still, I held my breath when I opened the door.
“Shay-shay!” Winona said, raising up her fist.
My stomach sank. There was a woman there, but it wasn’t Chelsea.
If I was a different man, on a different night, in a different world, I’d be thrilled to see a woman who looked like Winona Chambers standing at my door.
Winona was the owner of Heartbreaker Plumbing, an all-woman plumbing outfit; and, incidentally, the best plumbing outfit in Quince Valley.
We subcontracted or recommended Heartbreaker to all our clients.
Winona herself was a little spitfire: barely 5’3” with blonde hair and knuckles lined with grease.
She fixed her own car, could ID a plumbing issue just by listening to the way the water drained, and had been known to drink men twice her size under the table.
I’d known Winona for years, since she first moved here as caretaker to her younger brothers.
She spent a good five years trying to set me up with various friends of hers—can’t let a good man go to such waste, she kept saying—until I told her point-blank I’d stop talking to her if she kept trying.
She’d listened, but I still saw her sizing up every woman I crossed paths with, her hands folding under her chin if I looked like I might possibly want to say more than hi to them.
So, while it was nice to see Winona on my doorstep, she very much wasn’t Chelsea.
I’d sent that text to Chelsea close to twelve hours ago now, and had been kicking myself ever since.
Me telling Chelsea I didn’t want to see her yesterday—that was my last-ditch attempt at salvaging this situation.
But watching her go, and then hearing her voice outside as she talked to my dad, clearly trying to get away as fast as she could—it had been torture.
Last night with almost no sleep had been torture. So I’d sent her that text.
And hadn’t heard a peep since.
It was a chickenshit thing to do, to put the ball in Chelsea’s court.
But I knew it was the only thing stopping me from doing something much more foolish, like running straight over to her place and banging down her door, begging her to forgive me for what I’d done, and what I still wanted to do, more than anything.
But even though showing up unannounced seemed to be Chelsea’s M.O., I shouldn’t have been surprised she wasn’t there. And that made my already dark mood grow more sour.
What a fucking asshole.
“Hey Winona,” I said.
I gave Winona a half-hearted fist bump.
“Don’t look so fuckin’ happy to see me, b’y” she said, jamming a fist to her little hip.
Winona also swore like a sailor, and said words like ‘b’y’—pronounced bye—due to her family being from Newfoundland, Canada.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Aw, now you’re soundin’ like a Canadian,” she quipped, giving me a punch on the shoulder to rival Eli’s right hook.
“Would you calm down?”
She grinned, peering around my shoulder. “I’m the first one here?”
“My dad can’t make it tonight,” I said, “and Eli’s going to be late. But Ulrich and Ben are on their way.”
As if on cue, the rumble of an engine sounded before I’d even closed the door, and a motorcycle and a black pickup rolled into my driveway, and the two aforementioned players were walking up my path a moment later.
Ulrich Benito owned the record shop down on Riverfront Way, and Ben was the head chef at the restaurant next door, Viande et Patates, a French ‘peasant-food’ restaurant popular with tourists.
“Seamus,” Ulrich said, giving me a fist bump of his own as he came in.
Ulrich, or Ulli, as he preferred—pronounced Oo-lee—was almost as tall as me, with thick curly hair and olive-colored skin.
Winona liked to say Ulli’s face looked like it belonged in a painting—she meant a renaissance kind of thing, I knew.
Ulli was born to a German mother and Italian-American father, but grew up in New Jersey and dressed like a grunge artist from the 1990s—all plaid shirts and ripped jeans.
I met his fist with my own. “Ulli.”
Eli had met Ulli when he’d first opened his record store down on the riverfront.
I didn’t know him as well as Ben, who I’d gone to high school with.
Ben frowned at my doorstep now, eyeing me suspiciously.
He was thick across the shoulders, had a beard, and was covered in tattoos.
He looked like part of a motorcycle gang, but Ulli drove the motorcycle, not him, and we all knew he was more of an artist than a gangster.
He used to play in a band in college, one that got big enough he opened for a few big names for a couple of years, until he decided cooking was more his style.
Ben was my go-to for cooking tips, and once he’d run out of his restaurant to stop traffic in order to let a family of ducks cross the street.
“Seamus, the fuck’s wrong with you?” he said as he passed through the door, a broad box in his hand, stamped with his restaurant’s logo. Was I that obvious?
“You expecting someone new at the table tonight?”
I’d been staring out the door after him. Outside it was freezing, the stars brilliant.
“It’s nothing,” I said, my breath making a plume in the night air.
It wasn’t—it had to be.
It was idiotic to think Chelsea might show up here again unannounced.
Not after I told her point blank we shouldn’t hang out anymore.
But my idiot heart couldn’t drop the hope it held lodged inside.
And I had to admit it was my heart leading the charge at this point.
The moment she walked into my office yesterday, I knew.
I knew by the way the air around me crackled when she entered a room, sending heat all over me.
I knew by the way I weighed every word she spoke, like I’d never heard it quite like that before.
I knew by the way all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and push the world away; to keep her safe from anything and everything, that I was falling for my best friend’s little sister.
And that, I knew, was dangerous.
I pulled the door shut. “Come on, let’s lose some money.”
Ben raised an eyebrow but strode in anyway, leaving me peering out the glass panel at the top of my door even after I closed it.
I grimaced, following Ben over to the table, where Ulli was already shuffling the deck of cards.
“Beer?” Ulli asked, pointing his chin at the flat on the counter.
“Oh,” I said, surprised. I had beer in the fridge, but it wasn’t the good craft stuff Ulli had brought.
Winona, in the kitchen and already going through my cupboard, called out. “Oh no. Shay-shay needs something stronger tonight, don’t you, Shay?”
She was the only one who got away with calling me that.
And she wasn’t wrong. She pulled a bottle of single-malt scotch from her bag and I nodded gratefully. Ten minutes later, we were all at the table with cards in our hands and cash on the table, and for a little while, I was distracted enough that I only checked my phone twice.
“Okay, you going to tell me what’s up?” Winona asked when we took our first break.
Eli still hadn’t shown up, and Ulrich and Ben were arguing about some obscure band while rooting through my cupboard for plates for the snacks Ben had brought.
All normal poker night behavior, but tonight it felt like I was watching someone else’s buddies from someone else’s dining room table.
“Not really,” I said, downing my scotch.
Winona drummed her fingers on the table. “Nope.”
“What?”
“You’re not not telling me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“If you don’t spill, you know I’ll just ask Eli.”
My stomach dropped. She would, too. She always did when I didn’t give her all the information she wanted on anything. Which was always.
But her asking Eli why I was acting weird wouldn’t lead to anything good.
Eli would ask, and then he would see right through me.
The whole mess was just proof I should have left everything the fuck alone.
But something poked at me. Something Chelsea had said, back on the ridge.
How she had friends but wasn’t close because she never shared anything.
With Winona—hell, even Ben and Ulli—I didn’t share much.
But all signs pointed to them not being dicks about if I did.
Suddenly, the thought of not keeping this horrible, beautiful secret—that I was falling for my best friend’s little sister, and that it scared the ever-loving shit out of me—felt so relieving, so… freeing, I felt my pulse skip.
I swallowed.
“Winona, if I tell you, you have to promise—blood oath level promise—you won’t tell Eli.
Not now, not yet, and maybe… maybe not ever.
” Probably not ever. Chelsea said she needed a fresh start, and that sure as hell didn’t include throwing a wrench into her family life.
Plus, I’d never had a successful relationship that lasted with anyone.
Even if she was interested, the odds were stacked against me, and then where would Eli and I be?
Winona raised her eyebrows. Everyone knew Eli and I didn’t have any secrets—not anything serious, anyway. That we’d been friends since we were kids and weren’t afraid to tell each other hard shit.
Winona nodded. “Yeah, of course. Shit, b’y, I promise.”
I ran a hand through my hair, lowering my voice. “I think… I’m into his sister.”
“Cass?!” she exclaimed.
“Shh! And hell no.” If there was anyone more like a sister to me than Winona, it was Cassandra. A big sister, somehow, even though we were the same age. “His other sister. Chelsea.”
I hadn’t realized it but my stomach had been clenched tight. Shit, it did feel good, letting someone else know. That is until Winona’s mouth fell open. “The one you were in the—”
“The accident, yeah.”